I've been going through a rough patch concerning my own writing. I write daily (or as close to it as I can manage), but I've found myself with a shit-ton of unfinished projects. I have this problem, you see. I start something and then I get another idea that I feel a rush of excitement about and I stop what I'm writing to focus on the new project. Then, of course, I get another killer idea and I stop writing whatever I was currently tooling with and pursue the new idea. The major downfall of this is that some of these stories become stagnant and may never be able to be resurrected or may just sit in the Works in Progress folder on my computer for the unforeseeable future... Worse yet is the growing pile of these stories, these fragments and lost dreams. Sometimes they call to me, yearning to be complete.
So last night I woke up at three in the morning. My industrial fan was keeping me damn cold, which is the way I like to sleep, however it was playing games with my sinuses. After a half an hour of sneezing and blowing my nose, I turned the light on and busted out my laptop. I saw no less than five stories all open at one time. I cringed. I looked at each one trying to decide what to work on and I was wanting to go back to sleep so I didn't have to make that decision.
Man, I didn't like the way that felt. I love to write, so why would I want an excuse not to do so.
I realized then that there was a story I started a few months back that I had been secretly thinking about while working on stories for specific submission calls that sounded fun but were nothing of the sort. Yes, a story that had been percolating in my mind for years that I was finally ready to write. When I had started working on it I laid down six thousand words and moved onto something else. I read those words last night and decided to stick with the story until I finish the first draft. I work better that way. I may slip a short in here or there, but I seem to be able to only work on one long piece of fiction at a time. So be it.
Think I'll work on that story right now.
Cheers!
